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Plain English Summary
Can someone help you pass a test just by thinking really hard about the answers from far away? That's what researchers at the University of Padova tried to find out. In the first experiment, 40 people tried to pick real Chinese symbols from fakes β sometimes with a distant helper mentally 'sending' the right answers, sometimes alone. With the helper, scores jumped about 10% above what you'd expect from pure guessing, a modest but statistically real bump backed up by Bayesian analysis (a method that measures how strongly evidence supports a claim). A second experiment with 70 people using a simpler sun-or-moon task found a similar 9% boost. Intriguingly, these effects are comparable in size to classic telepathy-style ganzfeld experiments, but here nobody needed to sit in a dark room with ping-pong balls on their eyes β participants were just doing ordinary tasks.
Abstract
Aim of this study is to provide a demonstration of the non-local property of the human mind to connect at distance, that is, without the classical means of communication. In the first experiment, 40 participants were requested to identify in two separate sessions, 10 real and 10 false Chinese ideograms presented randomly, trying to connect mentally with the research assistant sending correct suggestions at distance that is without any possibility to communicate with them by conventional means. As control condition, in one of these two sessions the helper did not send any suggestion although the receiver believed the contrary. In the session without suggestion, the hits' mean score was 10.55; conversely, in the condition where a research assistant tried to suggest the correct identification at distance, the hits' mean score was 11.33. Both a frequentist and a Bayesian statistical analysis approach, allows to reject the Null Hypothesis supporting the alternative one, that is, the possibility of mental connection at distance exploiting the non-local properties of the human mind. A second experiment aimed at increasing the efficiency of this mental connection taking into account task complexity and the level of Absorption of participants as a personality trait deemed favorable to non-local communication. However the results were similar to the first experiment. Although mental connection at distance seems feasible, variables which positively moderate this kind of communication are still to be identified.
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Cites
- Meta-Analysis of Free-Response Studies, 1992β2008: Assessing the Noise Reduction Model in Parapsychology β Storm, Lance (2010)
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- Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect β Bem, Daryl J (2011)
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π Cite this paper
Tressoldi, Patrizio E, Massaccesi, Stefano, Martinelli, Massimiliano, Cappato, Sara (2011). Mental Connection at Distance: Useful for Solving Difficult Tasks?. Psychology (SCIRP). https://doi.org/10.4236/psych.2011.28130
@article{tressoldi_2011_mental_connection,
title = {Mental Connection at Distance: Useful for Solving Difficult Tasks?},
author = {Tressoldi, Patrizio E and Massaccesi, Stefano and Martinelli, Massimiliano and Cappato, Sara},
year = {2011},
journal = {Psychology (SCIRP)},
doi = {10.4236/psych.2011.28130},
}